Okay. These are why the battlewagons of old were built. Battleships were the bearers of naval artillery and these guns delivered. There are endless videos and pictures of the 16" guns blazing away raining down hate and discontent on the enemy, and BB-59 was my first opportunity to crawl around in the inner workings of these monsters. They just make you feel small when you stand underneath them.
When you crawl into the gunhouse (and I do mean crawl - the hatch requires some maneuvering to get through), you really get a feel for how crowded it must have been for the gun crews.
Here is the inside of the #3 (aft) turret. Once you haul yourself up through the hatch, you get a face full of sighting tube housing. That trench running through the bottom middle of the shot is where you end up. Note the operators seats; imagine sitting at general quarters for hours on end in those! The tube is like a giant, transverse-mounted telescope. This enabled the gun house crews to sight targets locally if the radar fire control failed.
On the other side of the tube, which dominates the space in the gun house, there are several other operator stations, and a bit less head room. Those red, square-shaped tubes about shin level house the rammers that pushed the shells and powder bags into the breech. The first shot is from the starboard side, the second shot is from the port side. In the port side shot, you can clearly see the local targeting computer (black box with large knobs sticking up vertically on the top). There is a similar aparatus down in fire control well below decks.
Shown below is the top of the local firing computer.
Of course, no trip to the gun house would be complete without a shot of the breech. The setup shown below in the #3 turret port starboard side gun assumes that the shell has already been rammed home and the first of three bags in this load is already in. The powder load was typically 6 bags. The door in the upper right of the shot is where the powder came up from the powder handling areas below decks in the magazine(s). A car with two compartments, each holding three powder bags, rode up an elevator. At the top, the crew would roll them onto the loading tray and the rammer would push them forward into the breech. The shell would come up a different elevator system, and would emerge into the gun pits vertically to be tilted forward where the loading tray would extend down and forward to span the distance to the opening of the breech.
This shot is pretty bad due to the reflection, but with the plexiglass in the way, there wasn't much I could do about it. This gives a much better view of the powder car door. Also, notice the large lever to the side of that door. That is where the rammer operator controlled the rammer. The space these guys had to work in was very tight. When the gun recoiled, it often came within a few inches of the crew so they had to keep on their toes to avoid being turned into a greasy spot on the wall. Finally, notice how the spanner tray is fully enclosed toward the back end of it. That is where the shells come through when it is in the vertical position. It acts as a support to lower the shell to the horizontal position, then as a spanner tray to shove the shell along its path to the breech.
Here's the view from the gun captain's position looking toward the access hatch from the main area of the gunhouse. Sitting there on a day when there was almost no one on the ship but me, it was great to sit here and soak in the sights and smells. I find that whenever I'm on board, the smell of ship brings back a lot of memories of my own time aboard the USS Tarawa. The gun captain's position seems to be one of the best spots in the house because it is largely apart from the flurry of activity in the other areas.
For some reason, the gun ready switch right in front of me made think about the clockwork chaos that must have revolved around pushing buttons and throwing switches.
Finally, here's a shot of the #3 turret from the main deck. The lowered gun is the breech demo in the shots above.
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